Category Archives: Miscellaneous

What Happens When You Use Walmart Consultants

Today on Dilbert, Scott Adams uses Dogbert to effectively illustrate what happens when you use a Walmart consultant.

What you have to remember with consultants is that you get what you pay for. If you pay a cut rate, you get a job with corners cut, as illustrated today in Overboard …

… and you get the pleasure of the consultant blaming you for their incompetence!

When hiring a consultant, it’s important to remember that it’s all about the value they can deliver, directly or indirectly. For example, a consultant with the skills and to help you devise a new business strategy that ends up increasing your sales by 30% is worth his weight in platinum. You should gladly fork over a few thousand a day for that kind of expertise as it will end up netting your company millions in the long run. A consultant who can help you select the right optimization or data analysis system for your business that can help it save an average of 10% on corporate buys is worth her weight in tantalum. And a technical resource who can adhere to a schedule and get the job done right the first time is worth his weight in gold — and it still amazes me that in 2010 the vast majority of companies haven’t figured this out! Everyday I hear another example of a company that went with the lowest bid and either got a system that didn’t work (and had to be scrapped) or, after exceeding the schedule and budget by 50% to 150% got a system that only did most of what it was supposed to do and required timely, and costly, manual workarounds. So, instead of paying 30% more for skilled resources who could do the job right the first time within the quoted timeframe and budget, the company spent 50% to 150% more for unskilled resources who delivered a shoddy product with a higher operational cost.

So stop hiring Walmart consultants, especially when, all things considered, Expert Advice is Cheap!

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Everything I Needed to Know About Procurement I Learned at Clown College

When people ask me why I’m so good at Procurement, despite not having a formal degree in business or supply chain or a professional certification such as the CPSM or SPSM, I tell them that I learned everything I needed to know at Clown College. At this point they let out a hearty laugh and walk away, but I swear on the clown’s code of ethics that it’s the honest truth.

People think it’s easy being a clown, but it’s not. It’s very challenging, just like Procurement. And the skills required are quite similar. And while I enjoy the sound of laughter, I would like to dispel the misconception once and for all that all you do at Clown College is clown around. So, in this post, I’m going to tell you the ten most important things I learned in Clown College and how they helped me to excel at Procurement.

  1. Paint Your Face

    As a clown, you need to maintain a consistent mood every second of every minute of every hour of every day. This can be very hard to do. But if you paint on a happy face, you can be happy all the time. And if you paint on a scowl, you can be scowling all the time. You’d be amazed how much this can help in tense negotiations.

  2. Put On Your Big Red Nose

    Just like a clown wears his heritage with pride, a Procurement professional needs to take pride in his, or her, work and let it show.

  3. … and Your Brightly Colored Costume

    One of the biggest keys to success, especially in Procurement which was traditionally relegated to the back room or the basement, is to get noticed. Just like his brightly colored costume helps a clown stand out from the crowd, dressing sharply helps a Procurement professional stand out.

  4. … and Your Big Red Shoes

    You never know when someone is going to try and step on your toes! The extra padding goes a long way to protecting your feet.

  5. … but Stay Light on Your Feet

    as you never know when you’re going to have to dance around an issue or run away from a charging bull. (After all, no matter how good you are, you can’t win every fight!)

  6. Storytelling is an Art Form

    A clown has to engage his audience with a good story, just like a Procurement professional. The ability to tell a good story becomes important when you have to balance the conflicting needs of multiple stakeholders in a major buy but still claim all-around success. It’s especially important when you have to explain to the CFO why you had to pay more to get the reliability required by engineering and the usability desired by the end customer (which is key if Sales is to meet its quota).

  7. Keep Your Hands Sleight

    because sometimes you just have to make magic happen!

  8. Learn How to Take a Hit

    When clowns get together, someone always gets smacked upside the head. Always. The same happens in business whenever something goes wrong, and they almost always try to blame Procurement first. The ultimate key to success is to be able to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going like nothing ever happened.

  9. Maintain a Good Sense of Humor Through it All

    In life there are ups and downs, but you’ll be able to get through them all if you just maintain a little humor in your heart.

  10. And Learn How to Work as a Team

    as you never know when you’ll have to squeeze into the equivalent of a Volkswagen Beetle with ten of your best buddies in an all-weekend disaster recovery session at an off-site location after a natural disaster took out your primary location.

Would You Go To Work If Cockroaches Ruled Your Office?

If you looked up and saw this, would you put up with it?

And if you saw this swarm of locust coming toward you, would you stay put and let them swarm all over you?

What about a swarm of killer bees? Would you still just sit there?

I’m guessing the answer is no, hell no, and get me the flamethrower!

So why are you still letting spreadsheets run your life?

Given that 80% and 90% of spreadsheets contain serious non-trivial errors, that could cost you millions, and land your corporate officers in legal jeopardy, you should be doing everything you can to remove these pests, which can be said to be the technological equivalent of cockroaches, from your company. You should not be treating them as your most beloved pet. Like capuchins and pit bulls, these deadly critters can turn on you.

Needless to say I was foaming at the mouth when I saw this recent article over on CIO that said BI Vendors Finally Embrace the Spreadsheet. Simply put, if the tool is attempting to unlock, extract, and aggregate data from an uncontrolled proliferation of spreadsheets, it’s not business intelligence. Spreadsheets are about as unintelligent as you can get. It’s one thing to allow input through and export to a spreadsheet (as spreadsheets are good for initial capture of matrix friendly data and for users who want to toy around with a copy of the data without corrupting the data store), but it’s another thing entirely to think you can extract life from a plague of spreadsheets. Plagues kill!

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You Can’t Learn India in 12 Easy Steps

Despite what a recent article in Sourcing Magazine may imply. You can’t even truly learn India in 12 hard steps … in fact, if you weren’t born there, you might not be able to truly learn it at all. Just like anyone who wasn’t born there will always be gaijin in Japan, anyone who wasn’t born in India will always be videshi, even though she will always be welcomed if she respects her hosts and host country. In an effort to explain why, we’ll attempt to convey some of the hidden complexities behind the “12 easy steps”.

  • Religion, Caste, & Language Play a Dominating RoleWhile there are only a handful of major religions, there are over a dozen minor religions with more followers than the entire population of many countries. While Hindi may be the official language, there are over forty languages commonly spoken in the various provinces, and India has four languages in the top twenty. In the rural areas and the older population, caste is of pre-eminent importance, but among the younger generation in the urban populations, it plays less of a role. And some of the modern global consulting organizations, like Wipro, have officially adopted a “no caste” policy in hiring and promotion (but it may still play an unofficial role among the executives and “old-timers”).
  • Festivals and Beliefs are ComplexAnd they vary depending on province, religion, and even family. You can’t know them all, or their importance.
  • Joint families are the normThis goes not only in the home, but at social events outside the home.
  • NamasteOne word, a thousand meanings.
  • Uncertainties and Poor Infrastructure are CommonAnd even the most impressive modern facility can go down without warning as much of the infrastructure it depends on (water, power, etc.) is poor and at the brink of failure.
  • Flamboyancy is Frowned UponJust because they wear brightly coloured clothing doesn’t mean they are outgoing. It’s what is normal and reserved for them.
  • Schedules are Guides, Not TimelinesIndians don’t work by the clock. And even though those that conduct international business tend to be more reliable than those who don’t, the uncertainty of India makes keeping schedules on a regular basis almost impossible.
  • Emotional Turmoil Affects BusinessBusiness is not separated from daily life in India.
  • Family FirstEven the CEO of a multi-national must cave into the wishes of his elders at thome.
  • “Face” is Very Important Everything has to be dished up with a spoonful of sugar.
  • Visitations aren’t always scheduled… and it works both ways.
  • Harmony Must be MaintainedBut if multiple harmonies are in balance, which one takes precedence?

Maybe that’s easy for you, but all I see is fractal complexity.

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Where Are The Extreme Supporters?

A recent Vision Statement in the Harvard Business Review on why a business should “Behold the Extreme Consumers”, the 5% of customers so infatuated with the brand that they spend more than 10% of their lifetime income on it that many brand managers fear, had some impressive statistics:

  • 100% personally identify with and say they gain meaning from a favourite brand
  • 98% have defended the brand against perceived attacks in the media or from other firms or individuals
  • 96% describe their favourite brand as “part of the family”
  • 94% display their extreme behaviour in relation to just one brand
  • 94% agree strong that “more often than not, buying cheap is expensive”
  • 94% never even consider buying a brand that rivals their favorite

Which leads one to ask, where the extreme supply chain supporters? Imagine how much more respected (and successful) the supply management organization would be if it could find the 5% of company employees in other business units who:

  • personally identified with supply management and gained meaning from its involvement
  • defended supply management against unjust attacks, no matter where they came from
  • described supply management as “part of the team”
  • displayed extreme support for supply management and supply management alone
  • agreed that any buying decision was multi-faceted and should be left to the pros
  • never even considered making a major purchase without the involvement of supply management

What a wonderful world it would be.

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